


Hidden Talents

by merelyafigment, visionofblue (merelyafigment)



Category: Oz (TV)
Genre: Gen, M/M, episode-centric character study, it's probably as boring as it sounds, just ask him and he'll insist he didn't mean it that way, mostly gen really, only Beecher/O'Reily-ish, since sadly nothing happens between them, that is totally not what Ryan is thinking about
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-20
Updated: 2020-08-20
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:54:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,088
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26009866
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/merelyafigment/pseuds/merelyafigment, https://archiveofourown.org/users/merelyafigment/pseuds/visionofblue
Summary: Ryan O'Reily thinking about Beecher, survival in Oz, and himself, after the talent show. Set during Season 1 ep. 'To Your Health'. (Not really slash unless you tilt your head and squint. Or you're me, who practically clapped with glee whenever those two hung all over each other while they were high.)
Relationships: Tobias Beecher/Ryan O'Reily
Kudos: 6





	Hidden Talents

**Author's Note:**

> Warning: Oz is a terrible place filled with terrible people, and thus there's always the chance of terrible language, terrible views and attitudes, drugs, violence, slurs and racism and homophobia, and other things that make me cringe to type, etc. This is pretty tame though, other than the vaguest mentions of canon badness and all the swearing.
> 
> Author's Note: It's new fic I just wrote for once! Not old stuff I just wanted to archive! I stopped reading and writing fanfic for over a decade, before finally attempting to write again recently this year. This is the first new thing I'm publicly slapping up as an experiment, and my writing is very rusty. I'm pretty sure it's comprised almost entirely of rust now. Well, that and awkward navel-gazing, clearly. This isn't the first fic I had planned to post after so long away, but I figured I'd lose my nerve if I didn't try something now.

Ryan hadn't really been able to look at Beecher during that fucked up talent show. 

O'Reily had been hoping for second there that there would be something at least halfway entertaining onstage at some point. There really fucking hadn’t been, not even a hint of anything not awful.

The stupid officially planned and sanctioned diversion had been nothing compared to being high, and the warm beautiful escape it gave them. 

High was temporary, though. The rest of life in here was a fuckton of low if you didn't know how to slash and claw your way to a higher position for real. 

Law Boy didn't know how to do that, or he didn't _want_ to know how to yet. All Beecher had was that fleeting high from drugs. Especially high with Ryan for a while there, as Ryan let the other man escape right beside him, falling all over him, pulling him up, and laughing in his ear. (Together.) After the rush, though, the ground they were left on was not the same.

No fucking way had there ever been a chance Ryan was going to participate in that fucking moronic talent show.

Trying to keep mostly clean, most of the time, since drying out in the hole was a bitch. Law Boy, wearing that ugly drag, forced out into the light for Nazi entertainment, had not helped Ryan's mood.

Ryan had thought maybe attending that shitshow would be worth it for the change of scenery, and the chance to watch everyone else during a rare new experience. Maybe he'd catch something he didn't usually see when everyone was distracted, or showing off, onstage.

Even that had been a disappointment. 

Sure, the animals out of their cages had gotten as loud and riled up as Ryan had ever heard them, but it still somehow wasn't enough to drown out Beecher's pathetic song. His pathetic voice, still carrying on despite everything. (Law Boy's voice itself wasn't the worst he'd ever heard. It was better than Cyril, before the accident, drunkenly shouting old Irish folk ditties way too loud right in Ryan's fucking ear when they were stumbling somewhere in the night.)

Ryan hadn't been able to look at the stage once Beecher in fucking heels hit it. Hadn't needed to. There wasn't anything up there that he didn't already know, other than the existence of a voice that would not stop no matter how much the scumfucks in here crowed and jeered. He had already known what Law Boy was chasing away when he stumbled into Ryan, under his arm, against his side. There was no new info up on that stage, or in the crowd during that tortured moment.

It would've broken Ryan's heart, if he had time to have one that broke in that way in here. One that wasn't just the physical muscle pumping blood, the thing he was doing everything in his power to keep beating. He didn't have that other shoddy poetic emotional kind in here, though. He couldn't. He had muscle and bone, and skin with a shamrock tattoo with a drop of blood signifying everything he was fighting for and willing to do to keep breathing stale air for 12 fucking years, until he could taste something fresh on his tongue and in his lungs again.

It turned out, though, that even after the show he was having a hard time looking at Beecher. He couldn't float away as much with Law Boy anymore. He had too much other shit to focus on, so he tried to treat him like any other fucker in here desperate to suck on his tits when Beecher had followed him into a pod. (Ryan had to stay tethered and clean, most of the time. For now.)

He wasn't Beecher, no matter how it had felt when they'd escaped this shithole together for a few glorious lost moments. He could lose himself around Beecher back then, because Beecher wasn't dangerous to him.

He sort of was now. Couldn't have the distraction. Ryan wasn't Beecher, and wouldn't ever be. All the shit Ryan was doing -- the guardian angel hack who's wings Ryan had ripped off to claim his own place higher up, the plan that was forming to deal with Nino and claw higher still -- it was his ability to do things like that and not even fucking blink that kept him from ever being Law Boy. On the outside, maybe Beecher was the better person to be. Most definitely not in here, though. 

Ryan barely looked up at Beech, because he might be tempted slip away again. Tempted to hold out his hand and let Beecher snort some escape right off Ryan's skin instead of his own again. But if Ryan did that, he might become untethered, too.

But he looked up enough, when Tobias needed his attention.

Only to see that Law Boy had been handed a shirt that was a clear death sentence, the Nazi fuck controlling him clearly ready to throw Beecher away permanently.

Ryan could've let that death sentence get carried out, and just given Beecher a familiar high to float away forever on. Ryan knew, though, that there was one last chance of appeal for Law Boy, right there in Ryan's own pocket. 

He'd seen something in Beecher, even from the jump. Some possibility. Maybe. (That voice singing that shitty fucking song hadn't been loud, or confident, or defiant. Just resigned and hollow. But it hadn't stopped, either.) Over time Ryan had caught glimpses of Law Boy maybe having the ability to grow some balls someday, if he lived that long. (Not at that fucking talent show. That shit was the opposite, Beecher slipping even lower, even farther away into nothing.)

But now. That voice hadn't stopped, nope. And he'd come to Ryan. Actually used the word 'help', which was a stupid fucking thing to do in here for someone like Beecher. 

Couldn't survive being a person like Beecher had been, no. But Beecher wanted to survive, it seemed.

Ryan could give him one last chance to see what was inside. Ryan could help the other man unleash it with the force of a hurricane.

And he did.

It was up to Law Boy from there.

Maybe that PCP would help him stop fucking blinking and floating away from all the hard choices in here, and instead drag out a new person for Law Boy to be. Ryan was pretty sure there was a survivor in there. 

Time to find out.

***  
End

**Author's Note:**

> Author's Ramble: I lost all my files of my fic years ago, and found very little O'Reily/Beecher I'd posted elsewhere when I recently checked, so I'm unsure if I wrote something similar in the past. Hopefully not! My memory is crap, and I'm sort of worried I have no new ideas and am just accidentally writing old ideas I've forgotten I already took a stab at. I became inspired to start rewatching Oz for the first time in ages, despite thinking I'd never write it again. (Wrong again!) There may be weird Ryan/Miguel snippets piling up in notes on my phone now, but they're all set in the Shifting Alliances 'verse so far, and I need to rewatch seasons 3 and 4 to finish them. I'm in season one right now, which causes things like this to happen.


End file.
